EV Revolution: What If Everyone In The United States Drove An Electric Car?

Americans are purchasing electric vehicles at an incredible pace, where once electric cars were a niche market within the automobile industry

today they're fast becoming the most desirable vehicles due to a combination of increasing gas prices and the climate change-inducing emissions that internal combustion engines create

So what if everyone in the United States drove an electric car today? Hello and welcome to What If Geography, where we try and answer the great geographic what if

questions of the world. I'm your host Jeff Gibson, and today we're diving back into the

wonderful world of transportation. More specifically, we're going to talk about electric mobility

Mostly cars, but we'll also talk about some of the other electric things that are floating around

If you haven't noticed, electric powered vehicles have sprung up all around the world

and there's a good reason for that. But before we dive into electric cars, I have two quick announcements

The first is that I'm officially launching a podcast version of this YouTube channel

with my friend and co-host Hunter Shobee, an actual professor of geography at Portland State University

The first episode of the podcast premieres October 12th, and we will be doing a deep dive into the American Southwest water issues

You can find each episode of the podcast right here on this channel, Spotify, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts. The second announcement is you can now follow this YouTube channel and podcast directly on Twitter

There you'll find additional content about episodes, sneak peeks at future episodes

and other geography-related content. You can, of course, still follow my personal accounts as well, and all links are in the

description below. Vehicles powered by electricity are not a new technology. Despite their recent prominence in society and transportation at large

the idea to use electricity to power vehicles originated in the mid-1800s

far before gas-guzzling internal combustion engines became the dominant form of propulsion

From there, electric cars became all the rage from the late 1800s and well into the early 1900s

In 1881, Gustave Trouvé presented the world's first fully electric personal vehicle at the International Electrical Congress

From there, electric mobility really hit the ground running. In 1897, electric cars were found in commercial use as taxis in Britain and in the United States

Suffice it to say electric vehicles were becoming quite popular in the early 1900s and for good reason too Electric vehicles were quieter than their gasoline ones and did not require gear changes providing a much smoother ride overall

Unfortunately for the nascent electric vehicle industry, advances in the internal combustion engine

soon made electric vehicles obsolete. The invention of the electric-powered starter, for example

made the process of starting a gasoline engine much easier. And of course, it was far faster to refuel a gas car

than it was to recharge an electric vehicle, something we are still figuring out today

Fast forward to recent history, and the electric vehicle had a mild restart

as the vehicle of the future. In the early 1900s, the California Air Resources Board

began a push for more fuel-efficient, lower-emission vehicles with the ultimate goal of a move

to a zero-emission vehicle. In response, automakers began to develop electric models of their current fleets

But after a massive campaign by automakers to discredit electric cars, California rescinded its push

and most electric vehicle models were never made available to the public, except for one

General Motors actually did release a vehicle called the EV1 and leased it out to customers

in California and Arizona. Despite the generally positive reception of the car

GM eventually reacquired all of its leased EV1s and crushed them all into little cubes

And from there, electric vehicles went dormant once again. Luckily, electric cars were not going

to stay away for long this time. In 2004, a then-unknown automobile company was founded in

California under the name Tesla Motors. Tesla would eventually go on to launch their very first

vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, in 2008. Meanwhile, in Japan, Mitsubishi launched its first electric

car, the IMEV, in 2009, followed by the Nissan LEAF in 2011 and the Tesla Model S in 2012

From there, the rest is history. Today, every single major automobile manufacturer in the U.S

has at least one electric vehicle in production, or will have one soon. And on top of electric cars

we are now seeing electric scooters in cities, people buying electric bikes en masse, public

transit agencies converting their fleets to electric buses, and even schools converting

their school buses into electric school buses. Suffice it to say, electric vehicles aren't going

away this time, and there will be huge benefits to that. But before we get into what a fully

electrified vehicle industry would look like today, if you're enjoying this video, now would

be a great time to subscribe. More fun What If Geography videos and soon to be podcasts are just one click away Starting in 2008 a renaissance in the electric vehicle manufacturing occurred due to advances in batteries along with the desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve urban air quality

As of summer 2022, there were 32 fully electric models available in the United States from the following automakers

Tesla, Audi, Ford, General Motors, Chevrolet, Rivian, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo, Nissan, Toyota

Volkswagen, Polestar, and Lucid, with many more models coming. Interestingly, Japanese automakers, aside from Nissan, have been the most reluctant to jump into

the electric vehicle space. Toyota only recently released their very first electric car, to lukewarm

reviews. And Honda and Mitsubishi currently have no fully electric vehicles available within the

United States. This is despite electric cars today quickly becoming the preferred type of vehicle

for people shopping for new cars. In March 2020, the Tesla Model 3 passed the Nissan Leaf to become

the world's all-time best-selling electric car, with more than 500,000 units delivered. It actually

reached 1 million sales just one year later, which is quite incredible. In late 2021, the Alliance for

Automotive Innovation reported that the sales of electric vehicles had reached 6% of all US

light-duty automotive sales. The report indicated that California was the US leader in EV adoption

with nearly 40% of US purchases, followed by Florida at 6%, Texas at 5%, and New York at 4.4%

It's worth pointing out that when an emerging product type reaches 5% of all sales in a given

category, it typically goes on to become the dominant product very soon, as it's a sign of

an oncoming exponential growth trajectory. And all of this growth will have a huge effect on our planet

The most immediate effect of converting every gasoline-powered vehicle to an electric vehicle

would be on the quality of air in cities and the amount of climate change-inducing emissions that

are currently being pumped into the atmosphere. Currently, roughly 27% of all emissions emitted by

the United States comes from the transportation sector. And of that 27%, about half come directly

from personal vehicles and freight trucks. That equates to roughly 807 million metric tons of

carbon dioxide every single year. If every single vehicle was electric, that number would certainly

plummet. However, while electric cars themselves don't emit carbon dioxide emissions, power plants

still definitely do So if your electric car is predominantly charged by a coal power plant the overall emissions reduction would be less but would still absolutely be a reduction in overall emissions But electric vehicles aren entirely climate friendly In fact the primary metal that allows for electric vehicles to charge at all

needs to be mined at incredible quantities. I am, of course, talking about lithium

And according to the International Energy Agency, the demand for lithium is projected to increase by more than 40 times over the coming decades

For this reason, new lithium locations are desperately being sought, not only to increase supply, but also to decrease dependence on other countries

At present, the U.S. has just one lithium mine located in Nevada, but more are being sought

And as with all mines, the environmental ramifications are clear. Mining is very destructive to natural habitats

In order to feed the world's appetite for more lithium, natural habitats around the world will be sacrificed

One area of recent contention around electric vehicles has been on their impact to the current

power grid. During the recent summer heat waves, electric car owners were asked not to charge their

cars at specific times of day in order to reduce demand on the power grid. This, of course

conflated electric cars as being the reason the grid was struggling at all. In reality

electric vehicle charging has a very minimal impact on the power grid and, in fact, could

end up helping the grid in the near future through something called bi-directional charging

Bidirectional charging is a fairly new but very promising method of transporting energy back and

forth between an electric car and the overall power grid. Typically, we think of electric cars

as drawing in electricity to be spent propelling us around town. However, with bidirectional charging

during times of peak energy use, an electric car could send some of that stored energy back to the

grid itself. This would help ease demand on the grid overall. This concept can also work in times

of emergencies or blackouts. The Ford Lightning pickup truck, for example, can turn around and

power a home during times when the power grid simply doesn't work at all. That's pretty powerful

Electric vehicles are the future of automobile transportation. California, Oregon, Washington, and more states have plans to phase out gasoline vehicles from new purchases by the mid-2030s

And while there are certainly challenges to electric cars, such as charging speeds and range

A future United States with only electric cars would have huge benefits to society at large

I hope you enjoyed today's episode on electric vehicles. If you did, please subscribe to my channel

And if you want to watch more of my videos, you can do so here. Thanks for watching. See you next time